


Mulberry Tinted Reasons

by gala_apples



Category: Bandom, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Child Abuse, Gen, Mutually Unrequited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-03
Updated: 2012-10-03
Packaged: 2017-11-15 13:16:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/527722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gala_apples/pseuds/gala_apples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spencer will never be with Ryan. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mulberry Tinted Reasons

There's a reason Spencer doesn't have sex with Ryan. And it's not the reason Brendon thinks, and it's not the reason Brent thinks, or his mom or his dad or Crystal or Jackie or Amanda. They're all wrong, and he gets satisfaction thinking it, even if he won't say it.

Brendon thinks it's for the sake of the band, so they don't turn into some Stevie Nicks bullshit fucking nightmare. He doesn’t exactly say it like that because he still uses his modified Mormon friendly language -Brent laughed for twenty minutes the first time he heard Brendon say gosh- but it’s essentially that. Spencer isn’t surprised that that’s what Brendon’s reasoning is, the band is everything to Brendon and Ryan. Ryan made Brendon believe, and now he believes so much that any day now he’s going to give up his family for music. They can all see it coming. To Brendon it’s unthinkable that Spencer would be willing to tear everything apart just for some making out.

Crystal and Jackie think Ryan just isn’t his type. They’ve each got their own ideas on the perfect guy for him. Crystal thinks an exotic man with chocolate skin and a thick accent would be better, Jackie thinks his boyfriend should be tall and built like a football player. Neither appreciates the skinny pretty aesthetic.

Amanda thinks it's because he has some sort of honour. The first time they hang out at a club, she sends Ryan off to buy her a bottle of water and turns to Spencer with her hands on her hips. She says she knows that they want each other, but that he’s taken right now, and thanks for not trying to steal my hot boyfriend. Spencer doesn’t have time to reply before Ryan gets back, but a ‘you’re welcome’ sort of hangs in the air.

His mom thinks it's because he'd rather see Ryan as a brother. They’ve been together for ten years and Spencer must not want to move him out of the friend zone otherwise he would have already done it. The first and only time she brought it up, she told him that it was okay to love someone but not want to have sex with them. He sent a desperate glance at Jackie and she pretended to start a fight with Crystal so he could escape.

Spencer’s not sure of his father’s ideas, he just knows he’s glad they don’t. His dad isn’t the Uries, but there are still things he’s not comfortable with, and as long as Spencer’s not bringing home a boyfriend he doesn’t have to think about it.

Brent just rolls his eyes and says ‘maybe not everyone in the fucking world is gay Brendon.’

They're all wrong, except Spencer is nothing if not brutally honest with himself -other people need lies from him so often he doesn’t want to do that to himself- and he knows they’re not entirely wrong. Each person that thinks they know him has an element of it. Ryan is not his normal type, normally he likes people that are whole and stable. Or at least he should want that to be his type, male or female. They will break up, and it will ruin not just the band, but Ryan and Spencer themselves. And before that inevitable end, to move out of the friend zone they will have to go out on a date. Spencer is not prepared to kiss Ryan, take his shirt off and find Amanda’s bruises on him. Nor does he want to find his father’s on him.

That's the crux of it, the part nobody else seems to pick up on. As it stands, he hasn't been inside Ryan's house in years, hasn’t seen his father in years. Spencer doesn’t go places where he doesn’t feel comfortable. Brent makes jokes about crazy Mormons trying to convert him and the dog and the chair, but Spencer’s the one that stands at the end of the sidewalk and waits for Brendon to be ready. He hasn’t been in his favourite tiny cafe for the best banana-caramel sundae in a year, left the day the lone waitress/cashier/cleaner kicked out two girls kissing for making a scene. He can’t force himself into a house where he knows even if Mr Ross isn’t around his presence is still there in stained carpet and air freshener covering vomit. 

It’s hard enough when they’re best friends. Spencer’s not one for intimacy; hugs only offer the opportunity to press on someone’s broken ribs. If he and Ryan had sex they would be naked, literally and emotionally, and neither of them could come out of that unscathed. It would be too fucking deep, they’d have to _see_ each other. Spencer’s not too worried about what Ryan would see in him, but he can’t look into Ryan. If they don't talk about it with awkward low voices stammering around the verbs, if he's not forced to see the mottled blues and purples and mulberrys, if he doesn’t have to feel him flinch when he touches the wrong patch of skin in the low light, Spencer doesn't have to lose his mind worrying about what he can't control.

Spencer doesn't know why Ryan thinks he doesn't have sex with him. Just because Mom and Dad never interfere, just because Crystal and Jackie shut up in fear of destroyed magazines and accessories when Ryan’s sitting in for dinner, just because Brendon’s non-stop rambling that sometimes leads into Spencer needs a boyfriend territory is neutralised by Brent telling him in an exasperated voice that _not everyone wants to suck cock, Brendon!_ doesn’t mean that it isn’t a thought in the back of his head. Ryan’s been fucking around since their first sex-ed classes, surely he must sometimes question why he doesn’t have a friends with benefits relationship with his basically out and mildly proud best friend.

Spencer wonders if he knows to blame his father for it. He wonders if that has to do with some of the biting lyrics Ryan makes Brendon sing, the songs that will never make it onto their distant, future, epic CD that they all sit around with Slurpees and talk about when they’re too tired to actually practice during practice. He wonders if Ryan wants it too, if he too wishes for bruiseless worlds where anything is possible.

In the end it doesn’t matter. He lets everyone keep their false ideas, he doesn’t ask the questions he wants to. Most importantly, he doesn’t have sex with Ryan Ross. A bruiseless world is not his to live in.


End file.
